Re: Yet another XyWrite mention

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Patricia M Godfrey wrote:

> . . . Meanwhile, Xy, properly rewritten (i.e., in Assembler) to modern
> environments,

Yes, but isn't Assembler chip-specific -- i.e., the family of x86 Intel CISC
chips, and their present, compatible AMD counterparts ? That architecture
has had a good long run, but I wouldn't bet the farm that it will be
continued indefinitely. Once you get a bunch of other chips branching out in
other directions, you're talking about several different Assembler's, no ?

> could become a starting point for a lot of other things, besides being the
> text editor-word processor we all love: a programmer's editor (combined
> with appropriate compilers; even I have managed some snazzy results by
> pairing it with dBase 5 for DOS); a starting point for a character-based
> DTP app (which is badly needed: if you want to print a text-only book you
> have to wrestle with frames and overlays and masks and a whole lot of
> visual stuff that is maddeningly unnituitable to a word person), XML
> output, even PDF (well, we already have that with Ghostscript).

Well, I'm sold, Patricia ! Now all you need to do is to convince the people
who are in a position to overcome the obstacles and make it happen.


Jordan